The Foundry

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• what?? it's being torn down?? I can never understand why they can't come up with some creative reuse for these buildings. it's a beautiful structure. in rome they took a similar structure and turned it into a museum.... http://www.centralemontemartini.org/
  there's better pictures of it here http://eternallycool.net/?p=578
  i love the way they kept the foundry machinery and just put in art all around it. stunning.

• Pina, in Saint-Etienne, France which I recently featured, they too are renovating their old munitions factory into a public space as well. There are a few reasons why something like that will not happen here:

  1. The land is surrounded by a still active factory. They generally don't mix these places with public spaces.

  2. There is little lack of vision in this city. From the mayor, through to City Administration there is no one who can envision the possibility of these type of projects.

  3. Our litigious nature. Large corporations like Ford are paranoid about possible soil/environmental pollution. The less exposure to these spaces the public has, they happier the large companies feel.

  I'm willing to be that we won't see anything built on these lands for many, many decades.

• PS - Thanks for the link above. As I told you I am heading to Rome later this year, and that now on my "to do" list.

• Great pictures...is access to the site open to anyone?

• Nice update. It is tough to find an alternate use for these buildings, as there is always the lingering question, right or wrong, of dangerous chemicals, etc being present, like our good friend asbestos.

  I doubt if Kahn imagined that this building would be preserved at the end of its life, but hard to say.

  Any word on what will happen to the site when it's cleared? Will it be a brownfield?

• I WOULD THINK THE GROUND IN THIS AREA WOULD BE FULL OR TOXINS. SIMILAR TO THE OLD CHRYSLER PROPERTY @ DOUGALL, THIS IS ONLY GOOD TO COVER WITH CONCRETE OR BLACKTOP,BUT NO COMPANY WOULD WANT THIS PROPERTY TO BE SOLD & FUTURE OWNERS SUE FOR THE CLEAN-UIP ???

• Shawn, it's not open I had the opprotunity to visit it a few weeks back on another matter and made sure I brought my camera...

  JB - From what I understand Ford will keep the site empty and under constant evealutaion and testing to insure the property is free from contamination.

  Mike - I'm no expert but the fact that this plant was in use until last year makes me belive that it is probably in better shape contamination wise than older plants that closed inteh the 70's or 80's. With all the new laws and Health and Safety requirements, I am certain the levels of toxins has been closely monitored.

  I am certain that Ford will be on top of this land and it will be carefully monitored.

• It looks all quiet there this morning so far but very clean. they seemed to tidy up yesterday and finish tearing down part of it around where i showed you before that they covered up, but that part is all concrete, sort of like a silo. so not sure how they will tackle that.

  i'll keep shooting video and photos though once they start up again. nice to hear you're going to rome too. i was there long ago back in 1980 or so. or 1978, hard to remember.

• I worked there 20+ years, know every inch of the place,here's what's in this string of pics:
  1st pic-- the cement silo on the right was part of the sand dryer complex, we'd truck the sand from that huge pile at the river, dump it,dry it and pipe it(alreadybeen removed in pic) to the Core Room . Of more interest(to me) is the silvery looking pipe shape on the left at/above roof level. This is/was #3 Cupola where we did the heavy duty melting--I'm amazed it wasn't sent to China, the stack's only 5 yrs. old(refit cost almost a million$--I saw the invoice)
  2nd pic--only thing to note is you can see where guys were taking brick 'souvenirs'
  3rd pic--hoops anyone?? the ball was always there if ya wanted to toss a few..
  4th pic--east wall of plant, walls ripped open to aid machinery removal, also another nicely framed view of #3 cupola(see above) in rear centre of pic--you can see the silver finish
  5th pic--east cranebay lotsa removed machinery, you can see one of the 2 overhead cranes(it's yellow in the pic) that were used to transfer molten metal as well as everything else the full length of the plant(as well as routinely running over less than alert pigeons on a regular basis)
  Almost brings tears to my eyes...
  If you want/need descriptions of any other foundry pics, I'd be happy to help

• Also forgot to mention, in the 1st pic what's important is what's missing. The tall blue exhaust stack for #3 cupola, it was identical to the one at the back of this pic, but you could clearly see the "missing" one from Erie St. as far west as Janette.
  Whenever I drove by that corner, I could tell if we were melting metal or not.. by the smoke(or lack of it)

  Keep the pics comin'

  Bob